-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A large ice shelf is `` imminently '' close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula , scientists said Friday .

Scientists are investigating whether the ice breakup is caused by global climate change .

Satellite images released by the European Space Agency on Friday show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island , a piece of land considered part of the peninsula .

The cracks are quickly expanding , the ESA said .

Scientists are investigating the causes for the breakups and whether it is linked to global climate change .

The Wilkins Ice Shelf -- a large mass of floating ice -- would still be connected to Latady Island , which is also part of the peninsula , and Alexander Island , which is not , said professor David Vaughan , a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey .

The ice shelf experienced a great amount of changes last year , the ESA said .

In February 2008 , the shelf dropped 164 square miles -LRB- 425 square kilometers -RRB- of ice . In May it lost a 62-square-mile chunk .

That meant the `` bridge '' of ice connecting Wilkins to the islands was just 984 yards wide at its narrowest location , the ESA said .

Further rifts developed in October and November , said Angelika Humbert of the Institute of Geophysics at Germany 's Muenster University .

`` During the last year the ice shelf has lost about 1800 square kilometers -LRB- 694 square miles -RRB- , or about 14 percent of its size , '' Humbert said .

Antarctica 's ice sheet was formed over thousands of years by accumulated and compacted snow . Along the coast , the ice gradually floats on the sea , forming massive ledges known as ice shelves , the ESA says .

Several of these ice shelves , including seven in the past 20 years , have retreated and disintegrated .

The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the past century before it began retreating in the 1990s .

`` It had been there almost unchanged since the first expeditions which mapped it back in the 1930s , so it had a very long period of real stability , and it 's only in the last decade that it 's started to retreat , '' Vaughan said .

Wilkins is the size of the state of Connecticut , or about half the area of Scotland . It is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened .

If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula , it will not cause a rise in sea level because it is already floating , scientists say . Some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse .

The Antarctic Peninsula is the piece of the continent that stretches toward South America .

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A large Antarctic ice shelf is cracking and may break away

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Scientists are investigating whether or not climate change is to blame

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Satellite photos show cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf

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The ice sheet formed over thousands of years by accumulated snow